Wasteland
by Lynne the Canuck
Summary: CHAPTER 5, COMPLETE:   And I will show you something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you, / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; / I will show you fear in a handful of dust. - T.S. Eliot
1. Chapter 1

**WASTELAND**

**DISCLAIMER**: _No copyright infringement intended. I only rent, not own._

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When slapping a hand over his wrinkled nose proved ineffective at stopping the offensive odour, Mark tried a more direct approach. "Jeez, man! When was the last time you took a shower?"

His long-time roommate hardly reacted, let alone was offended. Roger just shrugged, and continued to doodle over his staff paper.

He hadn't mumbled more than a few words since his girlfriend's funeral service over a week earlier. Mark figured he was in some sort state of shock – well, who wouldn't be, under the circumstances – but, was hoping that Roger would show some sign of life by now, no matter how small. Just something that would demonstrate that things would start getting better.

Better. Well, that wasn't the word he wanted to use. Roger would only get worse. Roger was going to die. Oh, the test results hadn't come back yet; but, they both knew the verdict.

Mark remembered the first time he went to a funeral for someone around his age. He hadn't known the guy for very long, and didn't visit him in hospice, because Mark was afraid of becoming infected, himself.

His father had disowned him, as soon as his son told him with what he was diagnosed. His mom, while she still loved her son and would send little care packages with home baking and knitting crafts, had stayed silent. Neither of them attended their son's funeral.

His friends and members of the AIDS support group he attended took up a collection and held fundraisers to help pay for the costs of the burial. Even when enough money was scraped up, some of the funeral homes that were approached either would not take his body, because he had died of AIDS, or they were going to charge more to handle him.

It was a slap across Mark's face. Every time something like that happened, and there had been many funerals since that first one, Mark's optimism and creativity weakened, until all there was left was a heavily fortified outer wall defending an incoherent, mumbling wasteland that went on forever.

… _**To be continued**_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: The Burial of the Dead**

_April is the cruelest month. _

Mark had seen the car pull up and stop at the curb in front of his building. It was too nice to belong to anyone around here, and lost tourists would have rolled up their windows, locked their doors, and sped through the stop sign at the bottom of the street. Equally nice was the way the two men who unfolded from it were dressed. Detectives – had to be.

Not thinking anymore of it, he grabbed his wallet from under his bedside milk crate, double-checked the humble amount of bills and, with a sigh, stuffed it in his front pants pocket as he headed out the door. The detectives, who were still climbing up the stairs, stopped when they saw him emerge.

"Hey, you live in that apartment?"

Confirming that he did, Mark waited for them to reach him. He was a little concerned about what news they were going to tell him, trying not to give in yet to the fear that had been nagging at the back of his head.

"We're homicide detectives with the 7th Precinct. Can we talk inside?"

Oh, shit. Here it comes, he thought, as he nodded and unlocked the door. Gesturing for them to sit on the cast-off couch, Mark mentally braced himself for what he knew what was coming.

"Roger's dead, isn't he?"

The detectives passed a look between them before answering. "How are you aware of that –," the larger of the two paused to check his notes, "Mark, is it?"

"Yes. I didn't know it for sure; but, Roger's been missing for a couple of days and, just knowing how he was feeling and how seedy this area is …," shrugging, as the finality of it lifted one weight and replaced it with something much heavier.

Everything started to shift away from him, as if he was trapped in a bubble.

Yes, he had filed a missing person report. Did they even bother to look for him? Or, was he not in the right social class?

Sorry, upset. Roger has – had - HIV and hadn't taken his medication with him when he left. No, he didn't see him leave, and was surprised to find him missing when he returned.

What? No, he didn't have AIDS yet. Don't you people wear medical gloves when you're examining a …

… Corpse.

"Roger! Fucking hell!" Mark suddenly screamed. "I can't take any more death!" The despair and pain that had been building up with each obituary and funeral wasn't directed at the detectives in front of him.

He struggled to be honest with himself, because he didn't want to use Roger's memory as a scapegoat, either. It was to the grotesque cruelty of Fate and the unbelievable apathy of an entire country that would turn their backs while thousands of their fellow countrymen writhed in despondency and died.

That same communication passed between the detectives again as they each caught the other's eye before standing to conclude the interview.

"We're sorry for the loss of your friend."

"Wait," Mark halted them, and strained to focus himself and regain some control over what felt like a crewless ship. "How?"

Again, it was the larger of the two who nodded and answered. "He was shot four times in the back."

_I had not thought death had undone so many._

**To be continued …**


	3. Chapter 3

_**Author's Note: Chapter Three, now complete. Further chapters are being composed. Enjoy!**_

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**Chapter 3: The Davis Case**

A homicide investigation is nothing like the slick drama of "Miami Vice", or dime-store mysteries full of quirky characters, like "Murder, She Wrote". The only fiction that four-year veteran, Detective Goese, had encountered that came close to the truth was a book called "The New Centurions", and only because it had been written by an ex-cop.

Activity around homicide scenes was boring, rancid, dirty, meticulous, and often peopled with the top brass. It's a very long, slow procedure where photos, blood samples and everything that might remotely be needed for evidence is taken from the scene. The rest is talking to everyone who knew the victim, and trying to piece together the last twenty-four hours or so of his life.

Davis was found with no identification, lying face down in a deserted lot on 7th between B and C, on Friday at twenty-oh-eight hours, by an anonymous tipster who claimed she witnessed the incident.

He was later identified through the finger print database on a possession charge that was later dropped.

Despite listing as his home an address in the suburbs on Long Island, his devastated parents claimed they had not seen their son for over three years, and that he had been living in a loft located near the lot where he died.

Tracking down the witness was crucial; but, actually finding her, without her stepping forward, would be one step below impossible in this area where dilapidated and abandoned buildings lined the streets. The neighbourhood was coated with the homeless.

It was literally a lost place for lost people. If he had had any sense, Goese would have long ago run, screaming from this contained, putrid ugliness.

It was starting to slowly improve now, but it wasn't that long ago when Goese would regularly drive by entire blocks that were filled with little more than rubble. It looked like the aftermath of the London Blitzkreig during WWII. Heroin was still sold in candy stores, and gunshots regularly announced the night. Shockingly, birdsong would celebrate cheap lives, as the morning regurgitated the bodies of people who had been murdered or had overdosed in the dark.

Almost without exception, the deaths in this isolated urban war zone had something to do with illegal narcotics. The fact that you couldn't see the ground beneath your shoes from all the heroin paraphernalia was standard around the EV. Despite the bullet holes, this case looked like it was no exception - probably a drug deal gone badly. Considering the environment, and his earlier drug arrest, either Davis was using, or he was supplying.

It wasn't until the dawn, when it was light enough to see, that investigators took notice a piece of graffiti, scrawled in green on the hollowed brick building that backed onto the lot. "Hope for Me. I Hope for You". Most just snorted at the irony.

Goese could feel a ripple of tiredness steadily rolling in on him as he surveyed all the junk that lapped at the deceased. Trying to find evidence that was directly related to the case, let alone was not contaminated, was going to be as easy as finding that witness.

One of the first cops on the scene approached the detective. "We've only been able to find four shell cases," he reported. "All of them that unique 32-20 WCF that you identified."

The casings would be taken to ballistics for positive identification; but, it was obvious that someone who could afford a Colt Police Positive Special, and use such an old fashioned gun to kill, was not local to this wasteland.

Gathering up his partner, they headed to Davis' last known residence, hoping that a search of that loft would yield something useful.

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It did; but, not in the direction they were predicting. After briefly speaking with Mark Cohen, his roommate of a few years, the detectives were permitted to search the pathetic shelter.

Much to their surprise, there was no evidence of narcotic use. Davis' possessions were few – a cot, sleeping bag, an old Harmony-made Fender acoustic guitar and picks, staff paper, eight old paperback books, toiletries, and a few changes of clothes. Other than the guitar and sleep gear, it all could fit in a duffle bag, with room to spare.

Apparently, he was one of those naïve artists who was lured to this slum by cheap rent and what they kept insisting was a creative atmosphere. The Fender was the only instrument he owned at the time of his death; so, based on the fact that this musician disappeared without taking his guitar and other possessions, it was likely that he got into some kind of trouble, and was held involuntarily somewhere for the three days between when he was last seen alive, and when he was found in the lot.

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"… _W__hen things decay, it's not a sign of something gone wrong - not in nature's grand scheme of things. It's a sign that nature is reclaiming energy and materials that seem to be no longer needed by higher organisms." - Boyce Rensberger_


	4. Chapter 4

_Poetry reference (throughout this story): "The Wasteland", T. S. Eliot, 1922._

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**CHAPTER 4: AT THE VIOLET HOUR**

_I can connect_

_Nothing with nothing._

_The broken fingernails of dirty hands._

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Sixteen useless hours after the call had come in about a body amongst the needle husks and burnt remains of silvery spoons on 7th, harvested no leads in this case.

The sun had risen that morning, hard and bright, thin and cold. Goese imagined that this was how it appeared to astronauts in the overwhelming blackness of space.

Irrelevant. Ephemeral. Imperceptible.

Like all the deaths he investigated. There was no purpose to the sun's existence, just as there was no purpose to life. It was just a mindless cycle of birth, struggle, and death.

Not surprisingly, a canvas run on the looky-loos yielded nothing useful to the investigation. No one saw the murder, and no one knew who loitered in and around the lot.

The grey faces that stared at the scene from behind the insubstantial police barrier looked dazed and vacuous, as if they weren't sure where they were. The spectacle that was to serve as their momentary arousal from the mindless daily routine had already been swept away to the morgue. Death, Goese surmised, was the most powerful method of arousal to what real life was suppose to be, and that's why people couldn't handle it. Real life had been allowed to atrophy for generations in the artificial construct of modern society.

The medical examiner's report was expected either late that day or early the next. Ballistics claimed they were short staffed and wouldn't be able to get to their shell casings until late next week, and the evidence unit had their hands full trying to find fingerprints, hair, blood, saliva on a cigarette butt, or a handy sign with the killer's name on it, amongst all the refuse that outlined Davis.

The only useful thing the detectives could do while waiting for evidence that might provide them with the correct and direct bearing, was to continue rummaging through information from his friends and members of the AIDS support group that he use to attend. First on the list was a follow-up interview at HQ with Davis' roommate, Mark Cohen.

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_Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit / Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit / There is not even silence in the mountains / But dry sterile thunder without rain_

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"Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt Roger?"

Mark's immediate reaction was to say no; but, as he reviewed the inventory of people who had revolved into and out of his best friend's life in the past couple of years, he couldn't be so certain. He recalled the thick hostility that rolled like old London fog off the father and brother of Roger's tragic girlfriend, during her funeral. Roger wisely had not approached her family and did not attend the grave side service. Mark thought that it was better for him, in any case, not to have seen what was left of her being lowered into the ground, nor the bright yellow backhoe concealed behind a nearby tree, like an elephant behind a lone sapling in a savanna.

It was a relief, of sorts, that none of the redirected anger and guilt was present a year later at the funeral of Roger's wife of four days. In fact, the accepting, but devastated widower was hugged and kissed on the cheeks several times by Mimi's mother.

Then, there was Roger's former heroin dealer. Mark had seen the guy a few times, mainly in Tompkins Square Park before it had been closed to the public in 1991 for its own version of gentrification. He knew that Roger had had a couple of run-ins with the slimy scab, after he won his battle to get clean of the drug.

This, Goese thought, was a more promising lead than the grieving family members. "What's this guy's name? Or, at least his street name?"

"I overheard April, that was the name of the girlfriend who killed herself, refer to him as The Man."

The Man. This was going to be another long day, searching through files for that street name. Hopefully, Narcotics had faster access to information on what he looked like, what his rap sheet revealed, and where he now lurked.

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_At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives_

_Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea … _

_Who are those hooded hordes swarming_

_Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked … _

_What is the city over the mountains_

_Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air_

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Reviews are like chocolate chip cookies; so, feel free to feed the author. ;)  
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	5. Chapter 5

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_Author's note: Chapter 5, now complete._ _Thank you for reading._

_I would also like to assert that the section that refers to President Ronald Reagan is strictly a matter of historical fact, and a reflection of Mark's stressed thoughts during a crisis situation. It is _**not**_ a criticism of Christians. Contact me if you would like further explanation.  
_

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**Chapter 5: WON'T YOU TAKE ME TO JUNKIE TOWN**

**.**

He coughed as he inhaled the tobacco. It wasn't the first time he'd tried cigarettes; but, he still was embarrassed by his response.

"You'll get use to it," Roger said with a small smile.

"I don't know if I want to," Mark said, as he rotated the tiny red heater in the milky darkness.

Roger smirked in the dark, flicking the end of the cigarette over the railing, and lighting another. It was like a votive candle, soothing to his anxiety, and passing the time when he could not concentrate on anything else.

"Mark," he wasn't sure he could complete his admission, but he had to. He owed it to the friend who had stood by him, even through his worst presentations. "I got sick in Santa Fe."

There, he said it.

Mark wasn't sure how to react. He knew this time would come, but he couldn't tame his emotions. He wished that something would halt that damned disease, now. Right now, starting with his best friend.

"I haven't been well since then," Roger confessed. "I wanted to come back here. Be with my wife, when …" he stopped to try and rein in the flood of desolation. It was so hard. No words could accurately convey the madness, loss, and empty terror. "I wanted to do right by Mimi, to tell her I was …"

Desperately, he reached for human touch and grasped his good friend's hand. "Mark, I'm so scared!"

Once Mimi had recovered enough from her heart-stopping near death experience to travel, Joanne had paid for the taxi that took her, Maureen, Mark, and Collins to the county clerk's office to get a marriage license at Roger's insistence. Maureen had bought a white, lacy dress for Mimi to wear for the occasion. Mark had lent Roger an all-purpose black tie to dress up his only good shirt, made of denim.

It was a more bitter, than sweet, ceremony. They all knew that Mimi was courting death, even as she formally gave her heart to Roger. The newlyweds cherished the taste, smell, words, and touch of each other in the limited time they had together; but, still, when his bride fell silent and still, Roger couldn't summon the strength to ward off invisible marauders from laying siege to his soul.

The distraught widower had been unable to function, to eat, to sleep. He wondered about the loft, crying, until his exhausted body could not produce any more tears. He seemed pillaged and paralyzed, while the world continued without him.

"Roger, be honest and open with me. Please."

Taking another long puff from his cigarette, he responded in an exhale of smoke. "Tomorrow morning, you'll see lesions on my back from Kaposi's sarcoma: the same fucking disease that killed Angel."

There had never been a moment since his HIV diagnosis, a little over a year previously that was not shadowed by illness and death. The disease was like a tsunami that hit everyone they knew in some way, and it seemed like no one was doing anything about it. Despite 17,000 Americans who had already died half way through 1990 alone, the only progress that had been made since 1981 was that Act-Up had finally succeeded in forcing the makers of AZT, Burroughs Wellcome, to lower their cost by twenty percent.

Hell, because he was concerned more about pleasing his broad power base of born-again Christians, with their vehement central tenet of demonizing homosexuals, than he was about the painful suffering and death of perceived society marginals from the "Gay Cancer", former President Reagan hadn't even uttered the horrifying swear word, AIDS, in public until almost the end of his presidency. There should have been a well-funded task force established years ago, to hold and defeat it. Instead, whole segments of the nation were unworthy of consideration by the government they elected to represent their interests. The cruel shock of betrayal felt by so many was so thick it could almost be touched.

And, as Mark's chest tightened, absorbing the next chapter in his best friend's painful struggle, years of suppressed rage at the indignities and injustices leveled at the people he cared about exploded.

Abruptly rising, he headed to the window off the fire escape, but was stopped by Roger's hand around his ankle. "You're leaving?"

"Not for long, I promise. But if I don't work off what I'm feeling, I'm going to punch a hole in the brick wall, here."

Sometimes, Mark's anticipated responses from Roger were dead wrong; so, he was taken aback when his ankle was released and he heard a snort of amusement. "Yeah, some nurse you'll be with a broken hand."

"Just so we're straight on this, I do not give sponge baths."

"Ha!" Roger smiled as he returned the volley. "You're just afraid of joining the other team."

After a pause, during which the wheels in Mark's head could almost be heard turning as he tried to make the connection, Roger explained, "My body's just that good."

The words were hardly out of his mouth before the irony of the quip sobered them both. Mark's rage ebbed, and he sagged a little.

"Look, Mark, I can't repay or thank you enough for all that you've done for me. You're the friend who was there from the beginning, holding me from drowning. Here you are, still, at the end to remind me of how far we've walked together."

Roger reached up and clasped Mark's arm, giving it a couple of gentle shakes before letting go. More was exchanged in that gesture than in all the time since he returned from Santa Fe.

"I'm just going to stretch my legs and think for a bit. I won't be long."

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Mark tried to immerse himself in the primal overload in the club, but was unresponsive to the smells of liquored sweat and cigarettes, the heat and slippery wet of needy skin, the blinding strobes of light, the challenging growl of the band and the answering roar from the gyrating crowd.

He bobbed around the small space for hours, with the awareness of a tennis ball - paralysed, while the world continued without him.

Near dawn, he collapsed on the bed, abandoned in the cell that had become the loft.

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_How to Slam Dance__:_

_1. Kick and punch the air while thrashing about. Slam dancing is about a release of aggression while the music is playing._

_2. Find a body to slam into. This is a communal movement._


End file.
